


Sapling

by elephant_eyelash



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Road Trips, let's talk about trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 21:16:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18599578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elephant_eyelash/pseuds/elephant_eyelash
Summary: Arya teaches her favourite soft Southern boys about nature.





	Sapling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [comradeocean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/comradeocean/gifts).



“Ash?” 

Arya rolled her eyes. “No, that’s an elm.” 

Hot Pie frowned. “But it looks just like an ash tree. It spreads out the same.” 

“Grab me that leaf, Gendry.” Even on a pony she was too short, and Gendry preferred walking anyway (she knew it was ‘cos he got saddle sores, but he never admitted it, but you could see from the way he walked, he just said he was a city boy and city boys walked). 

She put the leaf in the middle of Hot Pie’s palm. “See, it’s got little edges around it like teeth. Ash tree leaves are smooth and there’s loads of ‘em all together.”

Hot Pie and herself had amassed a small collection between them, twigs and buds and bark that they kept everywhere— pockets, sleeves, boots -- Hot Pie even stuck leaves behind his ear sometimes. Aria liked to twist willow leaves round her fingers and pretend they were rings, or to take the seed of a sycamore and rip off its wings and pretend it was a butterfly made of parchment paper. At night Hot Pie would lay his collection out carefully and have Arya tell him again which was which whilst he listened studiously. 

The first time she had shown Hot Pie a conker — smooth and supple and made exactly right for holding -his eyes went greedy and wide. Later on that night she had taught him conkers and won (she always won), and though Gendry refused to take part (“it’s a child’s game”) he still watched them. When Hot Pie asked her how she knew all this she jutted her jaw and lied and said her grandfather was a woodsman and he had taught it all to her, when really it had been her father and Maester Luwin and Septa Mordane her brothers, and at the thought of them instead of their faces all she could see was a Soldier Pine under thick snow. At night in her dreams the smell of the trees of the Riverlands grew keener: here she could discern the old trees and the new ones and the smell of mushrooms and moss and lichen. And the trees that changed their shape in the dark, too, the ones that grew faces that she and her pack knew to avoid. 

Later that night when Hot Pie was asleep — she was jealous, always, of his ability to fall asleep so easily — Gendry came and sat next to her. He drew messy, half-finished shapes in the mud with a stick (elm, she noted, but he wouldn’t care).

“Is it true that you worship trees in the North?” He said. 

The question annoyed her. “We worship the Old Gods.” And the Old Gods were the trees, or the trees were something else, why couldn’t she remember now? “We just worship in the Godswood, we pray there next to the trees. There’s ironwood which is really hard and strong, and even some trees that grew South, too, like chestnut and oak and ash.” She enjoyed listing them all, remembering lessons with Septa Mordane on one of their rare trips outside. She was probably dead now, Arya realised suddenly, and now she would never get to tell Septa Mordane that she had been right, that it _had_ been important for her to learn all their names.  

She didn’t feel she should tell Gendry about the Heart Tree, because how could she explain to him how it felt, there, fixed beneath its eyes? He’d just say they weren’t ‘real’ eyes. “Besides, there’s a Sept too. I worship the Seven as well.”

He frowned a little. “How can you worship _both_?”

“Cos I just do _._ ” She said, tired of his questions.

“Just seems one of them will get annoyed.” He threw his branch into the fire but it didn’t catch. “One of them old gods, or one of the Seven.”

She pinched his arm tight. “Well I’m annoyed with you right _now_.”

“You’re always annoyed.” He replied, unbothered. She prevaricated for a while over whether she should kick him instead, but she was just a sapling next to him. “But it must be nice, having them both – the Sept and the Godswood, I mean.”

Arya studied his profile for a moment. “Yeah, well, I don’t. Not anymore.”

She used to hate going to the Sept for her prayers, because it meant tidy hair and uncomfortable, endless stillness. Now she thought how quietly she would sit with her mother and Sansa and Septa Mordane, all proper: shoulders square, eyes focused forward, hands folded delicately in her lap. She tried to remember some of the prayers but none of the words – mercy love darkness light justice fury -- came together in ways she thought the Seven would recognise.

“A Septon told me once you could worship the Gods anywhere.” Gendry, forever fidgety, began to pick at some dirt underneath his fingernails with his teeth as he spoke. The fire was beginning to sputter. Arya bit her lip. They’d all be cold soon. Sansa always used to complain the sept was cold, colder than the Godswood despite being indoors, and Septa Mordane would just tell her that septs were built for ‘worship, not for comfort’.

“The doors in our sept in Winterfell were made of Ironwood.” Arya said. “It’s a tree that only grows in the North. It’s as hard as iron. They say it can’t burn, even.”

Gendry looked suspicious, as if he thought Arya was maybe perhaps teasing him.

She carried on, willing him to trust her. “You couldn’t make swords with it like you do _real_ iron, least I don’t think.” She paused. “Maybe you could, though?”

“What, like a wooden practice sword?”

“No, like a _real_ one. A pointy one.”

He laughed at that. “‘A pointy one’.” She swatted him away and he laughed. They settled for a little while, listening to the sound of Hot Pie snoring.

“If I was a Northener I’d worship the Ironwood trees, if they’re as strong as you say they are.” He said. “Not met anything that can’t burn, not yet.” He picked imagined dirt off his trousers. “They say they’re burning septs.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

Gendry shrugged. Arya tried to console herself with thoughts of Ironwood doors and stone walls.  

The fire was almost gone now, so they moved towards Hot Pie, Arya nestling in close between him and Gendry. Arya could never imagine she helped either of them stay warm much. She liked the feel of both of them, though they were both very different -- Hot Pie was soft but frantic and noisy, while Gendry was solid and uncomfortable but at least he stayed still.  

Neither she or Gendry had closed their eyes yet. Usually it was she and Hot Pie who would stay awake whispering until they were both too exhausted to continue (‘Know what I miss most?’ ‘No, what?’ ‘My gran.’ ‘.’ ‘Do you have a gran?’ ‘Sort of. She used to tell me scary stories sometimes’ ‘Like what?’ before the inevitable ‘ _Shut up you two and go to sleep’_ ).

“There’s a door made of weirwood and ebony at my old forge.” Gendry said, and Arya knew that although he was looking at and talking to her he also wasn’t. They often talked like this, conversations composed of secrets, ellipses and fragments and half-thoughts. “I remember seeing it when I first came to the Street of Steel after my mother died.” Arya shut her eyes and tried to imagine it, but all she could see was the Ironwood doors of the Winterfell sept. She tried to conjure up Gendry’s mother, too, but she just saw her own lady mother again as if there could exist no other kinds of doors or other kinds of mothers in the world.

“Were you very young when she died?” Arya had always been told she asked too many questions, but not only too many, she also asked rude questions. She wasn’t sure this was rude or improper, though, but it felt a dangerous question all the same.

She felt Gendry nod.

A question caught in her throat for a second. “Younger than me?”

“Yes, very young, much younger than you.” Gendry shifted his head underneath his hand, and the white of his eyes disappeared. Maybe he was lying to her so she would feel better, but she didn’t think so. “But still managed to be twice your size, milady.”  

She felt too tired to hit him or pinch him or kick him and, besides, it might wake Hot Pie up if she did. They had chosen a good tree to rest under tonight, one she had chosen herself -- this was always her job, and she realised she was proud of how expertly and carefully she took care of these soft Southern boys. She could feel Gendry’s breath on her face and thought how strange it was how well she knew both of them now, knew how they smelled in that they smelt of _Gendry_ and _Hot Pie_.  She could tell Gendry was almost asleep now, but not quite, by the way his body relaxed into the ground, and so she, too, could now feel her body yearn to reach deep down into the earth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
